Early stage investors evaluate you by deciding if you’re a good fit for the startup you’re building. They call this founder-market fit. Founderfit calculates your fit in seconds so you can see how VCs rate your experience and take the guesswork out of pitching
Hey Hunters!
Damian and Guy here from Koble.
In 2016 we co-founded a venture builder, Zero 1. There, we launched three tech startups and raised $8 million in venture capital, notably Lifted and Heata.
Launching a startup is the hardest thing in the world. And we strongly believe founders and investors are suffering from lacking a quantitative approach in the early stage.
We became obsessed with finding a solution. And in 2020 (after two years of lengthy discussions and technical research) we built Koble.
Today we’re launching our first tool, Founderfit by Koble
Early stage investors evaluate your startup by deciding if you’re a good fit for the business you’re trying to build. They call this founder-market fit.
Founderfit by Koble calculates your founder-market fit for you, so you can see how VCs rate your experience.
Our industry-first algorithms replicate the analytical and intuitive decision patterns VCs use to evaluate you - across experience, personality, and founder story - so you can see how you compare to previously VC backed founders. And the cool part is we’ll even tell you what to look for in your ideal co-founder.
What will my Founderfit score tell me?
The Founderfit score consists of five parts: startup expertise, domain expertise, technical skills, growth skills, and operational expertise. You get a score for each area, as well as an overall score based on how you compare to VC-backed founders and select cohorts like Y-Combinator.
How we calculate your score
Founderfit is powered by a proprietary suite of algorithms that replicate the analytical and intuitive decision patterns VCs use when evaluating startup founders.
We’ve crunched thousands of data points about the experience and education of successful startup founders, as well as the companies they worked for and the educational institutions they attended.
Your score is computed against this database and as a function of how your expertise relates to your startup.
Head over to www.koble.ai/founderfit to try it out for free today.
We’d love your feedback and we’re here all day to answer any questions!
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@swastikagurung1 100% we do! We're just a small team so had to pick a place to start but non-profits are on our road map for later this year. Happy to share with you when ready?
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I like this. Very cool. And I got a great score too! Is startup expertise the most important variable?
@trevorhildebrandt - Startup expertise is a very important variable but it's not a one size fits all - it depends on the specific idea. For example, if you're building a biotech business, domain and tech are more important. But generally it's hard to get into the 80th percentile without good startup expertise. Hope this helps?
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Cool concept. What type of recommendation does it give you around what type of co-founder you should look to partner with? Can you connect us to co-founders, too?
@aaronchurch our algorithms will show you what to look for in a co-founder that complements your skillset and experience, so you can give investors complete confidence in your founding team by selecting the perfect co-founders to fully complement your team. We can help connect you to co-founders, too, based on your ideal co-founder traits. Thanks for your feedback! Cheers, Penny.
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This is a very fascinating product. Thanks for creating this!
While I have started a couple of businesses, this is the first time I have co-founded a tech startup and have considered VC funding. I wasn't able to add my entrepreneur program though, so my score probably would have ended up being a bit higher.
Are you planning on adding Canadian entrepreneur programs to the list?
I think for education maybe expanding it to colleges and certain programs would be beneficial - i.e. if the person attended a UX/UI bootcamp with General Assembly.
Hi @karen_swyszcz thanks for your feedback - absolutely. We'll take a look at this for you - can you get in touch with us at hello@koble.ai with your program and I'll share your updated score with you shortly.
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I love the good-natured principle behind it - VCs back founders first, so a tool to help you rank yourself against their criteria makes sense.
But the (surely unintended) consequence of this system is to support, promote and reinforce bias, and that's wrong. Unless your "AI" (which platform is it ?) has a clear over-indexing against all biases, you'll end up over-indexing the usual white, young, middle-class, techie turned founder - and that's very wrong. We need a bigger and wider pool of talent, not more of the same.
There are other ways to make you (the real YOU) backable, and you don't have to copy anybody. Investors seek outliers, not copycats. One of the modules of the www.Fundraising-Bootcamp.com course.
#fundraising #founders #venturecapital
Hi @francois_mazoudier, thanks for your comment.
We're using Google's BERT to understand the startup description and determine the industries it operates in and the tech it uses.
For the scoring, we built our models from scratch - you can read more about here - https://app.koble.ai/static/foun... - let us know if you need any more details.
Regarding biases, we all know that it's close to impossible to make 100% sure that there are no biases, it's just how AI works. But, we are very committed to identifying & hopefully eliminating them, and have a solid plan to do that, using old fashion maths and statistics.
Last but not least, investors will always compare you to others when they decide to invest, it's just the nature of their job - they need to maximize ROI and that means making the best choice. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
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@penny_watson00 thanks for the reply. And once again, I'm not trying to put off anybody, I actually like (a lot) the principle of what you're building. But this un-intended bias theme is everywhere and I'm sure you'll be affected sooner rather than later, so you might as well prep.
For example measuring universities based on their website ranking... hmmm. Harvard will always win then.
Investors are trying indeed to break open the vicious circle of "rich uni > best intern job > choose him > repeat" but it's hard to do. Adding weight to the bias is scary.
Saying that, I'm sure there are other models that (maybe, I don't know) could be used as part of your calculus, to balance things a bit. Wishing you every success, the tool is great.
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This tool is really helpful. Fundraising and meeting VCs is such a black box of unknowns and it's so hard to know how to prepare. I will definitely use it before I go and raise next time. Thanks!
Founderfit by Koble
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